Ask Gerry Cooney- Jan. 18, 2013

Compiled by Allan Scotto

Hey, fans! Welcome to “Ask Gerry Cooney,” where you get to ask former heavyweight contender “Gentleman” Gerry Cooney any boxing-related question you’d like. Your questions for Gerry’s review will be featured at Maxboxing.com every Thursday morning.

Each week, Gerry will answer as many of your questions as he can on the SiriusXM radio show, “Friday Night at The Fights,” a show that Gerry co-hosts with Randy “The Commish” Gordon, the former Chairman of the New York State Athletic Commission.

Gerry, I listened to your comments last week about how cheaters should be pursued and I agree. My question is, why is a man like Victor Conte, who is notorious for providing undetectable steroids to athletes including Shane Mosley, by the way, allowed to be involved with professional boxers now? If we’re trying to weed out cheaters, isn’t that contradictory?

Our next question comes from Bernard Campbell, who asks:

Gerry, what place do you think ethnicity has in institutions such as music, teaching, politics and sports, especially boxing? Is there an ethical question in selling fights as tribal wars? Let’s face it; that’s frequently how fights are made and promoted. Is it degrading when a fighter plays up that angle and does it make the sport better or worse?

Gerry answered the following questions on last week’s show:

Our first question came from Jimmy E., who asked:

Gerry, Lance Armstrong is rumored to be about to confess to using performance enhancing drugs. The baseball writers refused to nominate anybody for the Hall of Fame and many feel it was because of steroid use. We’ve had fighters come up dirty as well. Is it stoppable or should we just throw in the towel and let athletes juice up and admire their accomplishments like so many did with Mark McGuire and Barry Bonds?

Gerry does not think that we should just give up and feels that steroid use is cheating and that the powers that be should be diligent in catching them.

Our next question came from Bernie Campbell, who asked:

Gerry, Sultan Ibragimov recently lost his WBO title but he was still ranked as the number three heavyweight in the world. So, with so many lucrative opportunities in front of him, why would he quit the fight game?

Gerry explained that when a fighter is used to winning and suddenly loses, it sometimes takes the heart out of them but that some of them return to the ring.